Burn Down the Sky: Part Nine

 

 

 

7

 

 

 

The Serbs were bearing down on the trench. The first of them were already throwing grenades and firing point blank into the Bosnians positions. As Alan searched for the trail the concussion of a Serbian grenade slammed him hard to the ground. It was obvious to Alan that the Bosnians could not hold the line for much longer. They had already taken a terrible beating and already the line had begun to crumble in places. If the Serbs found him there they would not waste time to ask questions. They would kill him just as surely as any legitimate fighters they encountered.

The grenade and the confusion around him left Alan terribly disoriented. Somehow he found his feet again and stumbled back in the place where the thought the trail down the mountain was, though it was impossible to be sure any longer. Alan tripped over something and went down hard. As a shell burst overhead he could came face to face the boy who had led him from the Muj camp. The boy’s chest was wet with dark blood, his dead eyes staring back at Alan. Panic gripped Alan’s heart. It screamed for him to escape any way he could, and failing that, for him to take up a weapon, just as he had done in the A Shau.

Serbs were now in the trench behind him. Desperate hand-to-hand fights broke out. Flashes of gunfire revealed men’s faces contorted with fury and murderous intent. Enemy’s clawed at one another. They choked, bit and caved in each other’s skulls with rocks or their own hands. More men poured into the trench, from both armies, until it was a seething tangle of bodies. Alan groped at the trench walls, fighting to get to his feet again.

Suddenly a Serb soldier was over him, lowering his weapon to blast Alan’s face to oblivion. As if in slow motion Alan watched the man’s finger tighten on the trigger. The muzzle of the man’s AK-47 looked large enough to swallow him, and seemed as deep and dark as death itself. Alan tensed waiting for the shot and prayed it would all be over quickly. He had seen too many men suffer with half their faces gone or terribly crippled in some other way. There was nothing more to pray for now other than a quick death.

The shot exploded like thunder in Alan’s ears. He felt warm blood wash over him and saw the Serb fall dead beside him an instant later. Realizing how close he had come to dying a great shiver ran through Alan. From out of the night strong hand pulled him Alan to his feet again. It was Adnan. Alan looked back at the dead Serb.

“Beginning to think I’m not welcome here,” he quipped.

“You’re a fool,” Adnan shouted above the din. “Come on!”

Adnan shoved him back and out of the trench. Together they skidded and slipped down the trail chased by gunfire. A shell exploded close by chasing them to the cover of an outcropping.

“Are you mad to come here? They said you were coming to speak with me, but I hoped you had more sense than that?” Mortar rounds screamed overhead, exploding among the Serb trenches.

“And you would die for revenge? Would your parents approve of blood spilled in their name? Your father hated this, and would be ashamed to see you this way.”

Adnan fell into a rage and grabbed Alan by the collar. “I would kill you if you were not a friend!”

Alan was momentarily taken by surprise. This was not the real Adnan, he knew, but some perverse aspect of him, which had lurked unseen and unprepared for. It was a door that had been locked and forgotten, and now with the death of his parents that door had been unlocked as a whole host of demons came rampaging inside. Alan shoved him back.

“Look at what you’ve become. You are ruled by your rage! Do you wish to have Emina bury you too?”

Adnan laughed. It was an absurd laugh, so out of sync with the violence raging around them. “That’s why you are here? Oh, I am an idiot! You only want Emina! You don’t care about me. If not for her I would be nothing but another Muslim in one of your articles.”

Men were coming up from below now, rushing past them. The fight had reached its peak. The outcome of the battle depended fully on the tenacity and brutality of the opposing enemies.

“Go back to Sarajevo, Alan,” Adnan was suddenly calm as if realizing something more. “My fight is here, with these men and for my country. If it is revenge then so be it, but my people, Muslims like me, are threatened here and I must defend them!”

Alan watched him climb back towards the trench, tumbling into the hell that had become that filthy place. The battle was slowing. Serb soldiers climbed from the bloody trench, some dragging wounded comrades, while others fled in terror and defeat to their own lines.

The war and the siege dragged on as the armies fought themselves to a stalemate through the following summer. The fighting was spasmodic, for each side was exhausted beyond measure. Only the vengeful hatred, which had been manufactured and stoked by their leaders, kept the enemies at one another’s throats, despite that would cause each one certain doom. Europe, NATO and the Western powers had all but given up on Bosnia’s beleaguered Muslims. But the Muslims were not ready to concede and become a nation of scattered enclaves languishing in a Serbian sea. They turned for help to the Muslim world, accepting any helping hand. Some came to stand beside their fellow Muslims out of a pure sense of comradeship, men who would come to aid anyone in danger, for that was their nature. Others came with darker designs, men who found purpose in the proliferation of hate and division. They sent fighters who were blinded by that hate, or so twisted by it that all the world was filtered into their hearts through that prism, men like Jamal Khan’s son, Jamal.

As for Alan, he fell into deep despair over Emina. He blamed it on the war, of course, and set out on his own personal crusade against the culture of ignorance and selfishness that had allowed it to flourish, as though that might explain why his feelings for her were so impossible. In each article Alan did his best to expose the real reasons behind the war, the true motivations of corrupt leaders and their functionaries and how they had nudged and manipulated the country into war. He detailed the stories of average folks cajoled and tricked into hatred, as if any of that mattered anymore. The hearts of men were suffocating beneath years of hardship and the moral confusion of war, until what transpired a moment before was as relevant to the reasons for war as anything that had occurred in history.

Emina drew further and further from Alan. The night they went to the mountain Adnan had been wounded. A bullet had passed through his side. It wasn’t a bad wound, but enough to keep him off the line through the winter. Emina and her mother cared for him those long cold months, nursing him through infection and through the darkest days of depression, as for the first time he could adequately grief the loss of his parents. She grew closer to Adnan than she had ever been, something she could see that greatly pleased her mother.

It was a warm spring day, and Adnan had not been out of doors since that night on the mountain. His wound was healing nicely, though he was still in some pain. A ceasefire had taken hold around the city, and a breeze from the mountains carried the faint scent of snow-white apple blossoms. Adnan and Emina walked slowly to the park downtown. It seemed as if the whole city was out, taking the Adnan and Emina back to a time and place before the war.

Reminders, however, were never far away. The wooden park benches had been stolen, no doubt burned for heat during the cold winter months. Instead Adnan and Emina sat on a stonewall overlooking the park. Emina was looking at Adnan, surprised that she had never realized how handsome he was before. His face was the same, but for the long, dark beard. Adnan’s brow was furled, his gaze distant. She touched his hand out of sympathy, but did not protest when he held it in his. It seemed to settle him, she observed.

“Adnan?” she said.

He looked at their hands for a long moment, studying them curiously. “I am sorry for all that I have put you through.”

“I understand.”

“This damned war.”

“This damned life.” Emina watched a small boy pushing a wheelbarrow filled with water jugs and bottles.

     “Can I ask you something?” He looked again at their intertwined fingers, and didn’t wait for her to reply. “Do you, do you still love him? Alan?”

Emina felt trapped by the words and pulled her hand away from his. “Why?”

Adnan gave an ironic smile. “Remember we use to play here as kids.”

“Was that us?” she smiled sadly. It seemed like a whole other world. After all that had happened it was impossible to imagine either of them being that innocent again.

 “You fell out of that tree and cut you chin. You bled so badly.”

“And you carried me all the way home, and got blood all over your new jacket. I remember that you got in so much trouble for that.”

“My mother thought that I was playing football, and sent me to my room without supper. It wasn’t until you came over a few days later and she saw the bandage on your chin that she finally believed me.”

They both laughed at the memory. Her shoulder fell against his and he touched her cheek. His eyes were gentle, like the old Adnan, the gentlest they had been since the death of his parents. The laughter fell over her like a warm summer shower, reminding her that she could indeed be happy again.

 “I don’t think I could have made it through the winter if not for you, Emina,” Adnan’s voice was soft and soothing.

“We made it through together.”

“We’ve been through so much, you and I.”

“Too much.” She thought of his question about Alan. A part of her wanted to answer him, to tell him that she no longer loved Alan, but she couldn’t lie to him. Adnan stood, groaning from the stabbing pain in his wounded side. He ran his fingers through his hair and paced for a moment.

“Would you think me a fool if I said that I think I was falling in love with you?” Adnan felt his heart flutter, as if whatever connection he still held to the world rested upon her answer. There were tears in her eyes. Emina found it impossible to look at him.

“I don’t know if I can ever love again,” she said.

Adnan’s head dropped. He felt like a fool, felt the moment when regrets are made. “I just, well, I just wanted to tell you.”

“Adnan,” she reached for his hand but he pulled it away.

“Don’t, please. I didn’t say it for you to pity me, only for you to know how important you are to me.” He was grasping at anything to save his breaking heart. “We, uh, we should get back. I want to take a look at my parent’s place, and…”

 “I’ll come with you.”

“No, no I would like to be alone if you don’t mind.”

Emina could feel a growing rage concealed behind those words. She felt colder for it, and regretted hurting his feelings. “No, of course not.”

They went to his parents place anyway, though they hardly said a word to one another. She helped him up to his parent’s flat, as he still had some difficulty with stairs. At the door he refused to look at her, which destroyed her heart more than she might have believed. It was something that she just could not bear.

“Adnan,” she said. He turned, his face cold and hard. She came up and touched his face, taking his eyes with hers. “Don’t hate me. I just could not bear this life if you hated me.”

“Emina I…” she cut him off with a kiss. He drew her into his arms and kissed her harder, tears tumbling over his cheeks. Emina drew away, feeling as though she had just made a terrible mistake. She fell against the wall, the look of confusion and then hurt on his face only increasing their distance from one another. She turned and started down the stairs, but despite the pain in his side Adnan caught her by the arm and pulled her to him. His eyes searched her stormy gaze. He felt himself falling, and hoping to be saved by her, but there was nothing there.

“Adnan, please don’t make me do this,” she said as he fell back against the steps. Emina left him there and hurried to her parent’s home. At the door she looked to the mountains and the siege lines there, cursing the war for trapping her here, when the only hope was to run away and put all of this behind her for good.

By summer the ceasefire had collapsed altogether. Sarajevo was dying, was being slowly strangled to death. In the mountains above the city the Bosnians threw every able-bodied man and boy into the fight hoping to break the siege. It was primitive warfare, a last bloody gasp by two armies that had battered and brutalized one another for almost four years.

In the city the situation had grown desperate. Shells rained down from the mountains, falling on hospitals markets and schools. This was punishment for the Bosnians audacious attempts to break the long siege. Little or no food reached the city, and soon even the United Nations peacekeepers found trapped for a time. To Alan it seemed as if the fall of the city was at hand. When a brief ceasefire opened a route for UN vehicles to enter the city he saw it has perhaps his last chance to escape. That night he packed a few things in a rucksack. He would make his way to the UN compound at the far end of the city and in the morning leave the city, perhaps for the last time. He had just placed the last items in his bag, pausing to study a photograph of Adnan’s parents when there was a knock at the door. Alan cinched up the straps on the sack and threw it over his shoulder. The owner of the hotel had arranged to take him to the UN compound. Alan paused and looked around the room once more. By tomorrow he would be out of Sarajevo, and with a little luck in Italy within a few days. He went to the door and opened it, his heart sinking as he did.

“Emina,” he said, saddened at finding her there. It had been some months since they had seen one another, and the silence between them now was resonated with all the emotions both believed were behind them.

“You’re leaving Sarajevo?” Her eyes went to the rucksack on his shoulder. There was almost a sense of betrayal there.

“In the morning.” It bothered him that something in her tone made him ashamed of leaving. It tortured him to know that, in the end, it was for her that he was leaving Sarajevo.

“May I come in?”

He stood aside and watched her cross the room. Emina sat at the edge of the bed looking at the floor, as if caught by a memory.

“I only have a little time,” he said.

She looked at him. This was a different Emina than he once knew, as if something in her had broken. “I came to ask a favor of you, but I won’t stop you from leaving if you must. God knows, anyone who has the chance to leave this place should save themselves.”

“Did you come here to accuse me?”

“I’m sorry, no, I only meant…”

“I’m sorry, Emina. I, I just didn’t expect to see you.”      

“I would have preferred not to come, and save us both the heartache.”

Alan let the bag slip from his shoulder to the floor. He was weak before her, a man questioning whether he had fought for their love enough before giving up. The hotel manager, a tall eager looking soul, appeared at the door.

“Gospodina Kirby,” he said, realizing he was interrupting a private moment, “your car has arrived.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Alan. “Please tell the driver that I will be right down.” The manager nodded smartly and left quickly. Alan looked at Emina once more, his shame now much greater.

“Will we part hating one another?” she asked.

“I think that in some distant place and time I will understand that you showed me that I could love again, but here and now, I cannot get past the pin of losing you.”

She nodded, and looked to her hands folded upon her lap. “I will think the same in my own distant time and place.”

“How is Adnan?”

She shrugged. “He says that he is in love with me.”

“And do you, love him?”

She looked to the window. Alan could see how hard this was for her. “How can I love a man who will throw his life away?” She went to the window and pulled aside the blanket. A light rain whispered over the melancholic hues of the cobblestone street. “I thought that I could talk Adnan out of going back, but something happened. He went back to the line today, and this time I know he will not return. He wanted to know that I loved him as he loves me, but I couldn’t tell him that. I came here to ask you to find him and bring him back to me, for I fear that if I lose you both I shall never be happy again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, picking up the sack again. She was still looking at the window as he started for the door. His heart broke silently as he went down to the car parked at the curb and climbed inside.

The driver was a young man in an army uniform. The car was heavy with the scent of cigarettes and gasoline. The driver pulled slowly away from the curb and turned past the city cemetery. In the distance smoke rose from trenches on the mountain.   

“Big fighting there,” said the driver.

“Terrible waste.”

“It is war. So you are leaving Sarajevo for good?” asked the driver. Alan was away in thought, deciding something.

“I’m sorry,” said Alan, touching the driver’s arm. “Take me back to the hotel.”